


Tidal

by Flowerflamestars



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas, Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: All Important Pacific Rim Outfits, Drift pilots, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, F/M, Found Family, Gen, Nessian Pacific Rim Fusion, Nesta has a foulmouth, accidental soulmate aquisition, adopting each others disastrous younger siblings as a sign of love, and an unbeatable kill record
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:40:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26291290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flowerflamestars/pseuds/Flowerflamestars
Summary: Fact: Nesta Archeron had solo piloted forty-one minutes longer than the nearest record holder, who’d died in minute sixteen.Story: Cassian took one look at Nesta and wanted to drift with her more than he’d ever wanted anything.If Nesta didn’t kill him first.
Relationships: Amren/Morrigan (ACoTaR), Elain Archeron & Feyre Archeron & Nesta Archeron, Elain Archeron/Lucien Vanserra, Nesta Archeron/Cassian
Comments: 16
Kudos: 70





	Tidal

The day the first category three Kaiju tore out of the Rift and around several continents specifically to shatter Nesta’s world, the moon was full. Blood moon, harvest moon- haunting full white light that would be the last thing Nesta Archeron consciously saw for more than three months.  


Later, after the coma, after physio and a shitton of tests that told Nesta what she’d already known in Alaska- Serene was never being piloted again, Elain was never _walking_ again- they told Nesta the full story.  


The stats.  


The _impossibility_ \- 57 minutes solo pilot. Recovery an hour and a half after Elain went under. Nesta had fought alone, Nesta had dragged a torn-apart, nearing meltdown nuclear-core jaeger to shore and gotten herself and her sister out of it.  


Two strokes. Four broken ribs. Fractured pelvis. Burn scars. 103 days in a coma.  


They told her the way she held the drift was being studied in pilot schools. That she’d won medals. That she’d apparently cut the head off the Kaiju- Thundercloud, some genius weather-themed cat three- and thrown it ten nautical miles.  


What Elain told her, in her wheelchair, beside Nesta’s bed when she woke: she was safe, she was fine, she was home.  


Home was her sisters, a sky-blue jaeger that wielded sword and flame, the infinite drift- Nesta knew it in Alaska, knew in a hospital bed in the Caribbean, knew it when she let herself be called back to the Pacific where it all began: she only had one of those things left to carry with her, and she didn’t know how to keep it safe.

***

Through a heavy downpour, the first thing that greeted Nesta on base was her baby sister’s smile.  


Feyre was blatantly, _obviously_ not meant to be here- the shatterdome itself was a myriad of living quarters and enormous bays, human chaos Nesta knew like her own beating heart- but not a single bit of it was cleared for trainees.  
  
That her sixteen year old sister had snuck away from her post should have been the first thing they talked about- Feyre was good, but she hated authority. Feyre was an Archeron, there was no world in which she wouldn’t end up in a jaeger, she needed to take it seriously- would have been, if Fey hadn’t stolen the opening volley.  
  
“They recalled Asani.”  
  
Rain, despite the umbrella, dripped from her braided hair. Cold down her neck, water pooled in Nesta’s collar bone- the chill didn’t matter, because she was _furious.  
_  
Feyre might hate orders- but Feyre had snuck away to be the first person who saw Nesta, to warn her.  
  
Big blue eyes just like her’s said, _this is happening._ The grimace that silently, understandingly answered Nesta’s scowl highlighted the baby fat still clinging to Feyre’s cheeks, a quicksilver fast swallow of youthful fear that said _, you almost died.  
  
You almost died, and now you’re going back out there- and I’m not going with you.  
_  
On public record, Nesta was one of the most successful Rangers alive: 40 drops, 40 kills. 8 second handshake. Elite hand to hand combat. Six years active service.  
  
In private, to the knowledge of the admiralty: Nesta Archeron had only ever successfully drifted with two other pilots, both of them her blood relatives.  
  
Elain’s nerves were ravaged, and Nesta missed her steps beside her’s like a _bruise_ \- but she’d fight tooth and nail against anyone, anyone, who so much as imagined Feyre might be old enough to drop.  
  
Feyre could probably guess the thought from her expression.  
  
“His brother’s already here in engineering,” Feyre went on, pulling Nesta through the neatly delineated crush, away from wherever her official liaison was doubtless soon to be looking for her, “Handsome as hell, dead silent- if his brother is half as shit with people”-  
  
“He’s not shit with people,” Nesta said.  
  
Cassian Asani was famous for a skill Nesta absolutely did not have. He was a Ranger, he was a pilot- about her age, similar length of service- but he didn’t have a co-pilot. He _was_ a co-pilot.  
He stepped in when injury fucked up the chain- he’d piloted more jaegers than Nesta had ever seen.  
  
But he didn’t stay- he didn’t sync up, he didn’t go deep- broad range test compatibility was not the same as a real drift compatible co-pilot, and Nesta knew it better than anyone.  
  
“- okay, but has anyone ever talked about him being hot? Because”-  
  
The Patchwork Prince, they called him.  
  
Nesta’s feet hit the metal railing as she finally stopped where Feyre had led her. Above the workshop- the shatterdome proper, though as the war progressed the whole complexes had begun to carry the name- the bay of shining metal and throwing sparks, slumbering jaegers being pulled apart.  
  
“Which one?” Nesta interrupted.  
  
Feyre snapped the umbrella shut, a loud cascade of raindrops sent over the catwalk, dripping down from struts. “In the back.”  
  
Nesta’s eyes followed the gesture of her wrist to a half-built, gleaming hull. Unpainted, unnamed- _hers.  
_  
40 drops, 40 kills- Nesta’s entire adult life had been defined by time in jaeger named Serene Majesty. Sword, flame-thrower, British build but American design- a mix as much as the Archeron’s themselves: Californian father, Londoner mother, childhood in long ago lost San Francisco.  
  
After Alaska, Serene was melted down.  
  
Somewhere bellow, the last of her parts were being put to reuse.  
  
“They took all your notes,” Feyre said, quieter. Frozen still beside her as Nesta herself was. “About the stabilizers, the sword weight. She’ll be faster. Harsher.”  
  
What she didn’t say because it wasn’t true: _safer_.  
  
By inches, with great personal effort, Nesta ruffled Feyre’s hair. Wet and clinging, above the heart-racing, life-giving scent of oil over heated metal, the pervasive salt of the sea, the smell of Feyre’s lavender shampoo filled the air as she shrieked.  
  
“Stop, _stop_ \- I have to go, my ‘copter is here any minute, but”-  
  
Nesta fended off her flailing hands. “Helicopter? Fey. Tell me you didn’t sneak off another base”-  
  
“It’s _fine_ ,” Feyre insisted, swooping down lightening fast to kiss her sister’s cheek. She took off at a jog, shouting over her shoulder as she went, “They transferred me to Hong Kong, I’ll be around! Air support owes me a favor!”  
  
Nesta waved goodbye- Nesta winced when she realized the _we love you_ she was waiting to hear shouted merrily, too close to her ear but spoken for both of them, wasn’t coming.  
  
In through her nose. Out through her mouth. 

Feyre safe on land, Elain taking a recuperative second honeymoon in the States. In and out- Nesta in Japan with a job to do, theempty hull of a jaeger to fill, Kaiju to tear to apart.  


She breathed in salt air, held until her lungs screamed as she watched sparks fly, exhaled and shifted to the right, where no one was standing.  


She’d never been more alone.  


***  


Nesta had to be carried out of their first test drop.  
  
Not because she was hurt- not because she’d passed out like the last three recruits they’d tried to throw in with her, before going on to the forgone conclusion everyone involved in the process knew was the only real option: Cassian Asani.  
  
Nesta was hauled, shrieking like a wildcat, shaking from head to toe, bodily pulled out of the sim and away from her now bleeding, wide-eyed, co-pilot.  
_  
Her fucking drift compatible co-pilot.  
_  
Wordless, her yell echoed through the metal hallway. She couldn’t see Asani, the broad shoulders of his brother? _twin?_ Utterly silent best friend and engineer blocked the way, but she could practically feel him wince.  
_  
“Nesta-“_  
  
“What the fuck do you think _chase the rabbit means? What the fuck do you think you’re doing in my head?”  
_  
He wasn’t the one who answered her. _  
_  
“I could say the same thing, Ranger,” Cool, cold, their commanding officer was looking at Nesta with about as much empathy as one might give a bug, pre-smashing. Nonetheless, a shocking smile curved up that savage mouth. “Three second neural handshake, Archeron. Record. You’ve got yourself a co-pilot.”  
  
Nesta snarled.  
  
Hasty, the utterly green marine restraining her dropped his hold- Nesta briefly contemplated throwing her elbow in his face, but discarded it in favor of marching straight off after her nightmare, beloved admiral, _“Amren.”  
_  
The woman’s brutal smile began to reach her eyes. “Nes.”  
  
“He almost fried both of us”-  
  
“So you attack him? Nes. _Archeron,_ the admiralty board is going to want your ass for this, and I am this,” She held up a perfectly manicured hand, the fingers nearly touching, “ _This_ close to letting them. _You attacked your co-pilot in the drift.”  
_  
_“He got lost.”  
_  
“Your compatibility just beat every stat we can pull, your brain flooded him.”  
  
Silent, not so different from Cassian’s swelling face, blood began to run hot and red from Nesta’s nose. She pinched it without a word, ignoring the instant, familiar alarm of everyone in the room to stare down her oldest friend. “Amren.”  
  
“You want back out there? _You need him.”_ She softened for a bare millisecond to thrust a handkerchief in Nesta’s face. “Clean yourself up, Ranger. Get your boy to medical, and then report of my office.”  


***

Cassian knew all the rumors.  
  
All the stories- Serene Majesty’s design included armor made from Kaiju bone, Serene was painted to match the exact blue shade of her older pilot’s eyes, Serene’s nuclear core was the oldest still running, and they were lucky she hadn’t melted the ocean floor of the Bering Strait right down to the mantle.

Fact: Nesta Archeron had solo piloted forty-one minutes longer than the nearest record holder, who’d died in minute sixteen.  
  
Story: Nesta Archeron called him a _patchwork dickbag_ within moments of meeting him, and proceeded to kick his ass, before they even let them drop test.  
  
It was his entire job to understand _people_ \- he was a pilot who’d never had a primary team, been in more jaegers in the last five years than anyone else alive. 

Rangers, _drop pilots_ , a small class already, were further defined by a skill Cassian had been born hardwired for, waiting there in the pathways of his brain for war to rip from the ocean’s tide: the neural handshake.  
_  
Openness_ was not the right word.  
  
Drift scientists had proven it was at the very least a partially physical trait- a structure that allowed resonance. Not genetically traceable, _not ye_ t- pilot parings were less than 3% blood relations, but _inherent._  
  
Strangers were most likely matches, despite the many behaviorist theories.  
  
They tested for it fighting- the mimic, the sync, the _clarity-_ tested for it with stress- breath, heart, ocean waters- and they tested for it with a myriad of less than reliable data analysis, but nothing in the world could truly predict the drift.  
  
You could be twins, you could be lifelong lovers- you could be as close to a person as Cassian could imagine, and the handshake could still fail.  
  
You couldn’t _want_ your way into drift compatibility. 

They ran the stats, they made it happen- Cassian was an expert on _making it happen_ , on finding the thread to follow- but that didn’t mean he’d been ready.  
  
Fact: despite her reputation, despite her obvious skill, Nesta Archeron had the lowest compatibility stats in the entire active duty pool. She’d only ever successfully drifted to combat readiness with one person: her sister, her co-pilot. Elain Archeron.  
  
It was the fastest stable handshake on record. 

But it couldn’t be _replicated_ \- to fulfill the demands of the corps, proof that would let Nesta fight, they’d pulled her kid sister into a drop test. _A ten year old._ They’re been desperate, they’d needed the Archeron’s, and the sister’s sank to perfect cohesion; Nesta Archeron’s sword arm and rage let loose on the enemy.  
  
Story: Cassian took one look at Nesta and wanted to drift with her more than he’d ever wanted anything.  
  
He tried to explain it to Azriel- his brother, his best friend, the person who would have been his co-pilot in this hellish war if the science had ever made sense- that it was about the _gaze._  
  
Not- _not,_ Cassian corrected, her eyes: beautiful, perfect, cool blue. Sunrise blue. Imperial blue. Jaeger that had taken down the first ever Category Three Kaiju, _blue._ It was the way she looked- not _looked_ , not the shocking, instant attraction that caught in Cassian’s throat and made it hard to breathe- the way Nesta had looked at him.  
  
Butterfly, wings pinned.  
  
Soul in a bottle.  
  
Flayed down to his bones, hooked in his marrow, Nesta looked at him, and Cassian knew- _Cassian fucking knew_ \- she saw him. 

Fact: Cassian was good at his job because he didn’t get lost- there was no rabbit to chase if you let the steps wash over you.  
  
Further fact: Cassian’s brain locked on Nestas. Deep, lost, _perfect._

He dragged her backwards through the worst day of her life, trapped them both in the purgatory of her thinking her sister was dead, felt so much of her physical pain that when Nesta had somehow disengaged half her suit to punch him in the face, _he hadn’t even felt it_ -Cassian drifted with Nesta, Cassian crashed, fell into Nesta and couldn’t be saved.  
  
The Archeron sisters record: 8 seconds. Archeron & Asani: 2.8 seconds.  
  
Story: Fastest handshake, surest lock. Later, cadets would be forced to study this moment: the violence of it, the way the machines had struggled to keep up. 

Later, Cassian and Nesta would be the pilots who defined _drift_.  
  
But now- now, they were strangers, they were the most drift compatible pair the Rangers had ever produced, and they were going to change the world.

If Nesta didn’t kill him first.

  
***

That Nesta did not, in fact, come with him to medical went without saying.  
  
Cassian was embarrassed at all that he’d gone- but he’d been too dazed to fight off the helping hands, to busy thinking fuck, _fuck, oh fuck, that’s what it feels like?  
_  
He needed stitches because training helmets had nothing on Nesta Archeron who only hit like she meant it. He needed a tranq and everyone he didn’t know to stop touching him because he couldn’t even feel the pain.  
  
He needed-  
  
He needed to see Nesta.  
  
Exactly twenty minutes later, to the eerie dot, he did. Nesta swept into Admiral Hikado’s office smooth as a reset sim. She’d changed out of the dropsuit Cassian himself was still wearing, folded down to the waist- boots, fatigues, a tank top on the opposite side of regs from everything else on her person, loose enough to reveal a fretwork of scars beneath her collar.  
  
Heptic circuit burns.  
  
Silver edged red, thin but unmistakable. They looked like lace- they were the outrageous, fiery pain Cassian had felt in her memories.  
  
The Admiral had asked Cassian to sit. Nesta stood, leaned against the wall just far enough behind him to make the hairs on the back of Cassian’s neck stand, a lounging tiger in his blind spot. Hikado waited for her to prop up a foot, waited until Cassian was practically twitching- _he was so, so far off his game- it didn’t escape his notice that Nesta sighed the exact moment he actually did-_ and then the yelling commenced.

Shame to the institution.  
  
Grounding. Training. A temporary pay cut.

Cassian tried to take full responsibility- Nesta interrupted, said, _yeah, no_ and then, equally as mystifyingly, _absolutely fucking correct, Admiral.  
_  
She saluted. She stormed away.  
  
And Cassian felt every step, every rattling shake of force from her boot heels ringing down the hallway, like he lived in her bones, within the weight of her motion.  


***

Ghosting was not, strictly speaking, _real._  
  
It was a story cadets told in training, the faithful lingering hope that lived in every drop-pilot he’d ever met swearing, swearing, they knew at least one team who could do it- drift without the drift, ghost each other’s bodies, sync down to their every day, unadrenaline-riddled souls.  
  
The data said, _maybe._

Ironically, it had happened more when the technology was worse. That very first wave of pilots, for whom their jaegers themselves were eventual death sentence, if not from the strain then from the background nuclear exposure.  
  
Deeper rush, completely lucky causality- when the feedback was worse, the pilots brains worked harder.  
  
There were documented cases. When one passed out, when one slipped- _slipped where the precipice was death or coma, the fucking haunting of the entire field_ \- the other stayed locked in.  
  
Felt their dreams, maybe. Knew when they’d wake, where they were hurt- in one extreme, wretched, classified case, experience secondhand the surgical repair of an open tibia fracture.  
  
Cassian had never heard of anyone, not a single soul, ghosting without combat.

If it happened at all it happened outside it- snuck in with the quiet, lingered where life took over- but never, not even in stories, without the soul-searing bond of actually _piloting_ a jaeger together.

One fucking drop.

A sim. 

And Nesta Archeron was gulping down Cassian Asani’s panicked breaths like they were her lungs- and looking like she wanted to tear him apart for the imposition.

***

Cassian woke up screaming.  
  
Unlike most jaeger pilots, he’d never set out to serve in his soul. Cassian had been a marine, barely, and then he’d been swept into the first round of institutional, mandatory drift tests, and never seen his squad again.  
  
He’d picked war. But war had chosen him right back, and Cassian had the scars to prove it.  
  
Nightmares weren’t new- what was new, _what fucking sucked and made him feel a little like pulling out his own hair_ \- was waking up screaming the name of a woman he’d never met, the impression of brain death hovering behind his eyes that had never happened.  
  
Elain Archeron, dead. Dying.  
  
Gut churning fear that overrode adrenaline as he started to _burn._

Gagging, Cassian staggered his way through the motion of shoving his feet in boots, pulling on a jacket- he had to get out of this crushingly small, metallic room. He-

Nesta Archeron opened her door at the exact same second.

Their quarters faced each other. Would probably prove mirror images of each other, if Cassian had ever been invited inside. In the five days since the drop test, Nesta hadn’t said a single word to him.  
  
She’d shown up- Nesta came to the mat every day of training in icy, raging silence, jumped through every hoop before them without even blinking- but if she spared a single thought for Cassian, it didn’t show.  
  
He was half sure at this point their daily activities had a hell of a lot more to do with some kind of pissing contest between Archeron and the admiralty than becoming a drop team.

This predawn shit of a morning however, Nesta stopped at the sight of him. Crossed her arms. Sighed a breath out her nose like she regretted the words before she even said them, “You drink coffee, Asani?”  
  
Cassian would have sold his soul for a cafe con leche. Ripped out a lung for the dark, cinnamon spiked scent of the thick stovetop coffee his mother had made every morning of his childhood.  
  
He nodded.  
  
Fell in step behind her as Nesta led him through the maze of the shatterdome, down to sea level, where work was already humming. Stepping through sparks to calls of her name that seemed…friendlier, than Cassian had personally expected, Nesta led him through a lab, around a small testing setup, and into a breakroom.  
  
He huffed a laugh when she stopped.

Was treated to raised, perfect brows over her shoulder in response.  
  
“We’re stealing coffee from _engineering?”_  
  
Nesta poured a cup, inhaled the largest, happiest breath he’d seen her take, and swallowed down half the mug before answering him. “Engineering swaps local tea with the go team in Gibraltar for sacks of Ethiopian.”  
  
She held out a second mug. “Shade grown.”  
  
Cassian took the coffee.  
  
Silently absorbed that this felt like an apology- and more pressingly, Nesta Archeron had _taste._

She let him take roughly two sips, before spinning on her heel and back out the door. Cassian jogged after her, sloshing heat burning his knuckles. “Where are we headed?”  
  
Her mouth smiled, but her eyes didn’t, as Nesta pointed up.

Cassian loved the catwalks- the freefall height that made it into the design of every shatterdome by necessity, the view. He’d never gotten over the raw beauty of jaegers, jewel bright, cohesive weapons powered on trust.

He loved all of it, and sometimes wondered what the hell that made him: born in this war more than born into happy, thriving Brooklyn.

There were words for it, what they called drop pilots: chimeras, gems, _suicidal god-complex monster fuckers._

Real terms too: Adrenaline junkies. 13% more likely to suffer pulmonary embolism. Unpredictable. Co-dependent bonds _. Dangerous._

Cassian loved being a jaeger pilot, but that didn’t prepare him for Nesta very suddenly dropping down to feed her legs through the railing to dangle, to sip her coffee and say, “That ones ours.”  
  
He knew where she was pointing.  
  
Sank down beside her and let himself look to the corner he’d been forcefully ignoring since he’d arrived- gleaming alloy, gaping circuitry. Two separate teams, wheeling out massive, _massive-  
_  
“Is that the _core_?”  
  
Nesta kicked thin air. “She gets her heart today.”  
  
A dream Cassian absolutely did not have: Nesta Archeron’s mouth saying, _our jaeger. My heart. Don’t chase the motherfucking goddamn rabbit, Asani.  
_  
He wondered when they’d test their physio. Wondered what the hell their heartbeats would say. Wondered, why the hell exactly after five days- _and three stitches through his eyebrow_ \- he was even here.  
  
So he said, in the least shitty voice he could summon repeating back her unfathomable words, “Ours?”  
  
Nesta rapped her knuckles on a strut. “I don’t assign jaegers, Asani. Your names on the hull too, isn’t it?”  
  
Frustration, the unfamiliar heat of temper he couldn’t contain, dissipated like smoke. Cassian drank his coffee. Cassian tried not to make it too obvious he was straining forward, trying to see what she meant.  
  
With a snort, Nesta pointed.  
  
“Upper left, like a body. Won’t show when they add the armor and sympats.”  
  
Acheron. Asani. Mark IV.

“You’ve piloted, what? Twelve jaegers?” Cassian was absolutely positive Nesta was asking because she liked the sound of it, that she’d memorized his file with the same insane tenacity as he had hers. “You’ve never had one that’s yours.”  
  
“ _Ours_ ,” Cassian said again, lightly. “Does that mean you’re admitting we’re co-pilots?”  
  
One lean-muscled shoulder rose to shrug. “The Admiralty makes the pilot teams.”  
  
“What? Just like that?’  
  
She huffed. “Not _just like that._ That jaeger is yours and that jaeger is mine, even if you’re the one who gets it in the end.”  
  
Cassian tried to drink more coffee, while he brain flipped that sentence over and over, looking for the rest of the words. His cup was empty.  
  
“ _Gets it?_ Are you- seriously, you’d walk rather than drift with me?”  
  
She shrugged again- and Cassian, Cassian was on fire. “Are you _insane?_ You have the best kill record in the Rangers. I’m the only person who comes close and- Archeron, how fucking selfish are you?”  
  
She didn’t rise to it. If anything, she looked even more at home, sprawled on blackened steel, lights of welding bellow dancing in her beautiful eyes.  
  
“If we both die, that jaegers a _waste.”_ She turned to look at him, head on. “Asani. It’s not personal- you’re a good person, I’m sure of it, I’ve seen your head- but I can’t fight the Rift without someone I trust. We’re not drift compatible. Our names are on that hull so if we go down with it we go down together- _you want to share a grave with me?_ I’m trying to stop it from happening.”  
  
Cassian’s reply was _strangled._

“What do you mean, _we’re not drift compatible?”_

Cassian had gotten lost. Cassian knew perfectly well he’d fucked up- it was impossible to be mad at how she’d reacted when he knew exactly, completely, how badly he’d _hurt_ her. How much Nesta missed Elain- not like how missed Az when they were on separate continents, but like how his torso might long for a missing arm.

He knew perfectly well why it had happened. He’d seen the _numbers-_ their brain waves might as well have been syncopated. Cassian got lost because there was no road to take. No barriers, no holding back.  
  
“Two point eight seconds, and”-  
  
“The handshake,” Nesta drawled, “Doesn’t mean we can fight together.”  
  
She was so radiantly confident he laughed. Drew a leg up to his chest to lean, to pretend this was an easy conversation. “Actually, that’s exactly what it means, _Archeron._ ”  
  
Nesta leaned back on her palms. Tilted her head. A panther that wanted to eat off his face. Body language that said exactly what Cassian was saying, in a different way.  
  
How they tested compatibility: the mimic, the sync, the clarity.

For the first of many times in his life, Cassian thought to himself, _god dammit, Nesta._

Two stories bellow, louder than the incoming tide, the core of their jaeger hummed to glowing life.

***

The first thing Elain said when she saw Asani was, “Oh, _Nesta._ ”

And despite the fact that Nesta felt more like climbing bare through the Breach than getting in a jaeger with the man, she knew what her sister was seeing. _The smile-_ two dimples on the right but one of the left. Close-cropped dark curls getting just long enough to assert themselves. 

Shoulder and arms and _everything_ that matched the face saying- _you’re looking at a sculpture._ You’re looking at a person whose whole being might as well have been idealized from an artists eyes.

14 drops, 12 kills. Only two back to back drops in the same jaeger.

Hand to hand combat elite. Muay Thai. Second generation marine.

Charm that had cracked _Amren._  
  
“I know,” Nesta said.

Elain arched a pale brow- different color, same shape- and hummed. “And he’s?”  
  
“Yep.”  
  
Quietly, Elain swore.

***

Hikado decided part of their punishment was base level drift profiling.  
  
Cassian considered jumping into the ocean. Nesta muttered something that sounded distinctly like _bullshit baby group therapy.  
_  
Cassian had already done this…alot. With teams on three continents, before they’d come up with the primary drift analysis tools. It was speed dating for pilots, forced bonding time that was supposed to spark some kind of familiarity they could carry into the drop.  
  
It was _uncomfortable._

Unnecessary- Nesta and Cassian had stats for days. 

_We’re not drift compatible._

She was a bad liar. 

“You’ve done this before?” Cassian had asked her, settled wearily across a rickety table made more unstable by her outstretched legs, tucked in a quiet closet of a corner on base. Her immaculate, aggressively even bootlaces were in his face. 

“I have _not_ ,” Nesta purred back, “But if that tone means you think I’ll derelict the duty, you’re wrong.” She pointed behind his head. “Camera. Camera, camera, and look, _camera._ ”

“You’ll actually talk to me because you’re being recorded?”  
  
“I’ll talk to you because it’s orders, Asani. I can handle _questionnaires.”  
_  
She stole the binder out of his hand- they both pretended he hadn’t already been holding it out, that their reaches hadn’t perfectly, on time, overlapped.

She opened it. “Mhmm. Where are we from? Easy, we’re both American. Do we have siblings?” She snickered. “ _Yes._ Where did we go to school? Places that are under the ocean now.”  
  
Cassian tried to take the binder back. She shut it on his hand. “That gave us the _childhood trauma book?”  
_  
She flicked the hand he hadn’t moved, lodged between the pages. “Origin stories, Asani.”  
  
“We already know all of this, _Archeron_ ,” He sighed, and she finally let him pull back.  
  
“Wanna flip?”  
  
It seemed like a trap- it felt like… _fun._ Cassian had the distinctly wild thought that Nesta must have been a nightmare in first level training, and half wished he’d seen it. Had her voice already contained that murder drawl at sixteen?

Cassian leaned forward, propped elbows on knees. “Go ahead.”  
  
He might have said it like a challenge- Nesta’s face _might_ have brightened in catlike pleasure. 

“Cassian Karam Asani. Twenty-seven years old, in service since your eighteenth birthday.” She was watching his face, and Cassian could do little but stare back. “You grew up on the East coast. Have an older brother. You’re a caffeine addict who likes to box. Dad died when you were ten.You have your mother’s green eyes and your paternal grandfathers face.”  
  
Her gaze flickered up, caught him. 

Cassian could hear his heart hammering in his chest, pull from the rise and fall of his ribs too fast. “That’s not in my file.”  
  
“We _dropped,_ Asani.”  
  
More than a drop, a successful drift. He didn’t need to say it, Nesta was already sniping in victory. “You love _strawberry matcha cake_.”  
  
“I can make it, too,” Cassian shot, with forced lightness. 

“Nesta Iseult Archeron. West Coast. Your mom taught literature, which is how you got that name. She died when you were twelve.You’re the older sister. You’re also a caffeine addict. Three tattoos. You miss sparring with your sister, and it makes you feel like shit. You horde Korean moisturizer.”  
  
“Eight tattoos.” She didn’t mean herself.

“You hate the color blue.”  
  
She laughed, and it wasn’t particularly joyful. “Your brother’s downstairs in the labs.”  
  
“Wrong.” Realer smile, he wanted to keep _talking,_ “I have two.”

Nesta recrossed her legs, the entire table monopolized. “Middle child?’  
  
An outstretched brown hand, tilted back and forth, “Azriel is only a year older than me. My other brother is…more complicated. Much younger. Az and I half raised him, but we don’t really talk.”  
  
And Nesta, mystifyingly said, “Me too. Two sisters, I mean.”She rolled her shoulders, made a face that said _fuck,_ as her mouth continued with, “I’ve been trying to keep her out of a jaeger since she was fourteen.”  
  
“Three Archerons in the corps? Thats”-  
  
“The Admiralties wet dream, I know. She’s good- she’s so, _so_ good, but I’m trying to make sure she grows up first.”

“Rhys can’t drift. He’s Airforce now, incredible- twenty years ago, he’d be on tract to be an astronaut, but now-“  
  
“Now the world is gone to shit?”  
  
“Tried to, at least.”  
  
Her laugh was nearly silent, small. _Real._

Cassian looked at Nesta, and Nesta looked at Cassian. 

And then the alarm went off.

***

In the hallway outside the war room, painted in screaming red light- _they’d run, they were grounded, they were off active duty without a finished jaeger, but they’d both run_ \- Nesta twisted to look up at Cassian.

“Hyperion or Venom?”  
  
If something compromised the other pilots, if they had to go out there in a jaeger that wasn’t _theirs_ \- it hit Cassian that a part of him had really thought Nesta would never drift with him again.

But she would- she would and they’d fight, _together.  
_  
“Hyperion.”  
  
Nesta nodded once, sharp. Venom was bigger, iron-hulled duel-core Russian make- but there was only one real answer.

Hyperion Alpha had a sword.

***

They weren’t called out.  
  
On its seventeenth drop, Neon Venom went under, sunk beneath the sea in five different parts. Torn apart. Hemorrhaging fuel, the spiked tail of a kaiju straight through her hull. Core ruptured and blown, ten minutes after recovery. 

One of her pilots went down with her- only one. 

***

Cassian caught up with Nesta six hours later, once more high above the workshop.

Her eyes were red. It was Cassian who’d yelled at command, Cassian whose teeth had ground wincing as Nesta’s fisted hands shook, while they watched a cat three tear through the rest of their newly gained installation.  
  
He dropped to the walkway floor beside her.

Nesta offered the flask in her hand without words, and Cassian took it without looking.

Gamely, immediately, choked down a splutter, “What _is_ that?”  
  
Nesta snorted, but the side of her body rocked against his as she re-settled back against the railing.  
  
“Whiskey. We’re in Japan- what did you think it was?”

As they often did, Cassian’s eyes skipped, jumping between the red curve of her mouth, the stratosphere of her cheekbones. “Gin?”  
  
The quiet noise, almost a laugh, was scathing. “You were prepared to drink straight gin because I handed it to you, but whiskey was a surprise?”  
  
If he hadn’t still been caught- stuck on the white, white, life-drained look on Nesta’s face listening to the coms in command- pinned between knowing what she felt and his own sick, rising anger as Neon Venom’s pilot screamed and _kept screaming-_ he wouldn’t have risked saying it.

But he could only joke, because otherwise Cassian was going to say something shattering. 

“I trust you, Archeron,” Cassian drawled, and the tone was a laugh, but the words were true. “ _You’re my co-pilot,_ babygirl.”  
  
She punched him in the ribs.  
  
“Weak, Asani.” The sting said she was playing too, but there was something different in Nesta’s voice after she threw back another swallow. “Do you not drink?”  
_  
I didn’t know._

Cassian swung a careful arm around her shoulders, not shocked but _frozen_ by Nesta automatically pillowing her head on his biceps. “Don’t uh, don’t worry about it. Az still prays five times a day, but I’ve never been religious.”  
  
Nesta made a low noise in her throat, offered acidly, “I was baptized _catholic._ ”  
  
And Cassian couldn’t help the laugh, “That explains literally everything about you, thank you.”  
  
Tendrils of her escaping hair tickled his bare arm, the backward tilt of Nesta’s head growing more dramatic as Kaiju remains were hauled in below, undoubtedly under the careful, extremely excited eye of the other Asani on base. 

Maybe that was why Cassian kept talking. Maybe- he couldn’t quite lie to himself, he wanted to talk to her _so fucking badly-_ maybe the shared anger did it, or the absolute ease of being this close.  
  
Maybe, it was just that it was Nesta Archeron.  
  
“I do drink. A little,” Cassian ruffled a hand through his hair, “You know how it is on base.”  
  
“The only place in a shatterdome with more alcohol than a pilots quarters is engineering, and engineers don’t share?”  
  
The laugh caught in his throat. “Yeah. _Yeah-_ and I don’t historically,” Cassian bumped his knuckles against the metal floor, one two, one two, “Get along with pilots?”  
  
For the first time since he’d touched her, Nesta went rigid. “Your entire job is getting along with pilots.”  
  
He could hear the death sentence in her voice and braced for it. Stole the flask from her grip for just a bit more burning courage. “Yeah, no that’s true. I do- in the fight, hunting down fucking kaiju. But I’m not…not a real drop pilot, you know? I pick up the pieces and I’m good at it, but there’s always a connotation. Harbinger of doom. I make them uncomfortable.”  
  
For a solid second, Cassian was sure he’d really, really fucked up.  
  
And then Nesta was bracing a hand on his stomach to sit up, twisting to face him. _“Who?”_  
  
He’d though she was getting up to _leave-_ tried not to focus on the bite of her fingertips through his shirt. “Who?” Cassian repeated, warily.

“ _Who the fuck told you that you make them uncomfortable.”  
_  
“Archeron.”  
  
“Shut up, Asani.” Her grip contracted and there was a part of Cassian- a long buried part that remembered what it was like to live in a world that didn’t encourage every bit of contact, every possible familiarity that would help hold a drift- that wanted to moan. “ _Shut up._ You drop. You go into the drift. Jaegers are a death sentence and you’re climbed into twelve. You’re a drop pilot. You’re a Ranger. _You’re my fucking co-pilot, so shut up.”_  
  
She stared at him furiously, and Cassian stared back.  
  
Broke into a grin. “You’re my co-pilot.”  
  
She sat back on her heels and started drinking again. “We’re still not drift compatible. You’re all rabbit chase, Asani.”  
  
“ _Sure,_ Archeron,” He waited for her to scowl at his agreeable tone, waited for her to open her mouth again, before lunging forward to wrap both arms around her. Nesta accepted the hug with the same grace as cat that knew perfectly well it wasn’t escaping until this moment had been tolerated. Cassian smiled anyway. “ _You’re my fucking co-pilot,_ Nesta Archeron.”

She punched him in the stomach.  
  
But not before Cassian had kissed her forehead, those murderous eyebrows bunching together. 

They didn’t move until daylight had trickled back into skylights overhead, molten sunrise the only cue time had passed at all.

***

Somehow, they stopped talking again.  
  
The review of their drift profiling was separate- Hikado sat Cassian down, said in that absolutely cold-sweat horror inducing voice, _call me Amren_ , and asked him how he thought it had gone.  
_  
Well, Admiral. Our numbers speak for themselves, Admiral. I don’t care what Nesta says, Admiral, we can fight and we can drift- please don’t take me away from her-_

Cassian told her he thought they were moving toward natural cohesion. 

He was still in the hallway when Nesta stormed out, yelling that didn’t carry through the iron door all over her face.

They hadn’t spoken since.  
  
But still, they were here: here in mandatory training, flinging each other through what felt like the second, brutally silent hour of this fight that would have made the admiralty _lose their collective minds-_ a perfect dance that was killing Cassian inside.  
  
She dove, he caught. He struck, she blocked. Forward, backward- _to the floor_.

Cassian had the advantage of height and strength. He was flexible for his weight class- but he had absolutely nothing on Nesta when it came to speed. It wasn’t even a grapple- Nesta seemed to know exactly where he’d strike the second before he did. _Did know_ , because Cassian knew the same thing about her. 

Neither of them could win, but neither of them could get away either.  
  
Normally, Cassian would have called it an age ago.  
  
But Nesta- flushed as he’d ever seen her, furious for three days straight, sweat running down her neck- _wasn’t saying a goddamn thing._

So he picked a fight.

Later, Cassian wouldn’t even remember what the hell he’d said- something about piloting, something about fighting- and like she’d been waiting for the opportunity all along to speak, to burn through what she was feeling without actually talking about it, Nesta immediately snapped back.  
  
The fight became nonsense, the fight became panted swearing-

“I’m saying,” Nesta hissed, valiantly trying to flip Cassian, “You cannot have the right hemisphere.”  
  
Cassian’s back hit the mat. “You drop tested on the _left,_ Archeron.”  
  
“Because they’d already calibrated the wrong side, asshole. Righthand, sword. Left hand, offset.”

He caught her foot, flung her back. “And _why the hell_ do I _automatically_ get the offhand?”

_“Because I get the sword!”_

She finally stopped moving, bright eyed and panting. Looked at him. Leaned close- close, close, close, Cassian could see flecks of grey in her irises, the sweat in her hairline- and jabbed him in the chest. “Hyperion.”  
  
It was a victory cry.

Cassian groaned.  
  
“So you’re _good,_ ” He ground out, absolutely not flirting with his co-pilot, “So you fight with a sword.”  
  
Nesta nodded, apparently pleased. “A sword and”-  
  
“Not anymore!” Intruded a jubilant, vaguely British voice. “‘Sup Archeron.”  
  
Cassian hadn’t even heard the door open. Had long ago memorized the eclectic shades of fury Nesta Archeron’s face could take- for a second, he genuinely thought he was going to have to bodily pull Nesta away from the tall, red-headed man she’d sprung to her feet and _run at.  
_  
Instead, she jumped into his arms. 

Cackled a laugh Cassian had never heard as the man spun her, only laughing harder as he groaned and set her down.  
  
“‘Sup’? Sup? _Vanserra,_ what the fuck.”  
  
“What can I say, I’m trying to adapt for my grad students.”  
  
“You sound like”-

“A very charming, but still respected elder peer?”  
  
Lightly- Cassian could actually see the effort to be gentle in her body- Nesta punched the man in the arm. _Vanserra._ His stomach lurched.  
  
“Elder something,” Nesta hissed, “You here for us?”  
  
Vanserra’s smile widened into a massive, slightly crooked grin. “Yep.” He popped the p, looked for the first time over Nesta’s head to include Cassian in that radiant expression, “As I was saying, not anymore- you get two swords now.”  
  
Swords- _swords_ for both of them. Cassian’s nervous heart only picked up further.  
  
“Introduce me to your guy, baby sister.”  
  
“I am _literally_ older than you- just because Elain has disgusting taste in men-“ She glanced back over her shoulder to where Cassian had risen to his feet and froze. “Shut up, Asani.”  
  
Vanserra, curiously, “He didn’t say anything.”  
  
Nesta, like this wasn’t killing Cassian, _like it didn’t mean something_ , “He didn’t need to.” She huffed, tugging at her sweat rumpled braid. “Asani, meet Lucien Vanserra. R&D mecha weapons, Pan Pacific Defense Corps.”  
  
He waved. “I’m also her brother-in-law.”  
  
And Cassian, because he was an idiot, because he had a whiplash of adrenaline entirely created by his own treacherous endocrine system, said, “Your sister is _married?_ ”

“Unfortunately.”  
  
With an eye-roll that Cassian was starting to assume was an Archeron family requirement, Lucien sidestepped Nesta and held out a hand. 

“Cassian, right? It’s good to meet you. I’m here to put the finishing touches on your jaeger.” His eyes found Nesta’s- found her already looking at him, every bit of anger forgotten. “And I’m going to not take personally the shock, because frankly, all you pilots are the same.”

All you pilots- Nesta’s co-pilot had been _married._ Was still, presumably, happily wed.  
  
“ _Inshallah_ ,” Cassian reflexively replied, shaking his hand, “Sorry man, Archeron just didn’t tell me. It’s good to be working with you.”  
  
He caught Lucien mouthing _Archeron,_ eyes twinkling _,_ before the man brightly laughed. “She does that.”

Nesta smoothly took over the conversation, talking about armor calibrations, and Cassian was grateful. Happy to be the sweaty, lingering shadow to her right, half a step closer than normal people would stand as she leaned back into his space.  
  
People liked to say, _pilots aren’t the marrying type._

The numbers: the oldest living jaeger pilot was 42, and dying a slow death from radiation exposure. Likelihood of dying in combat: 76%. Stats for dying of _drift_ _complications_ : 1 in 3.  
  
Fact: Nesta Archeron believed she’d die in a jaeger.  
  
Story: pilots didn’t date. You lived on a hair-trigger, and you had to love what you did. You had to love, in a kaleidoscopic, fundamental way, your co-pilot. It wasn’t a life that left room for normal milestones, for dreams from a world before the Kaiju.  
  
Some people believed romance corrupted the drift.  
  
Some people were certain that half the active duty pilots were married to each other, in one way or another.  


Fact: Cassian wanted to be as close to Nesta Archeron as humanly possibly, within or without the drift.

***  


The second drop test was hell.  
  
All Cassian could feel in the initial engagement was _grief._ Nesta, sick to her stomach with it, consciousness aching like a bruise.  
  
And then they connected.  
  
He tried to hold on- Cassian tried to plant his feet and stay _separate-_ but the drift was an ocean. The tide was Nesta Archeron, and he went under- _Nesta training, her whole body singing with power, Nesta in a red dress watching Elain get married, her heart clenched. Nesta, walking the rows of a farmers market, picking out peaches in a city that didn’t exist-  
_  
The handshake held- Cassian wasn’t lost, Cassian slammed back to reality, and realized Nesta was screaming.  
  
Not in his head. Not in the Drift. Aloud.  
  
The techs were yelling, the sim was rattling around them-  
  
Cassian ripped himself free and tore off Nesta’s helmet.  
  
She fell, strings cut, right into his arms. Cassian didn’t understand what was wrong until he caught her- until a shriek of pain clawed from her throat.  
  
Her suit was _smoking-_ overloaded.  
  
“Archeron?” She wasn’t talking, white, shaking- “ _Nesta_. Can you hear me?”  
  
Her pupils expanded like pools of water. “ _Son of a fucking bitch_.”  
  
“There you are.”  
  
Before the sim techs got the door open, before Cassian had gotten control back of his panicking body, Nesta had stripped out the suit. Pulling skin with it, bleeding- Cassian wordlessly helped her.  
  
Tank top. Underwear. A fucking alarming amount of blood.  
  
“ _Nes_ , your burns opened-“ Cassian wanted to blame his abrupt wooziness on the insane length of her legs for someone so short. He couldn’t.  
  
The door opened.  
  
“Rangers, Ma’m, are you?”  
  
Nesta snarled. “ _Every_ part of that drop was calibrated wrong.” She stomped up to him, eyes on his coat insignia. “Hong Kong transfer, who the fuck is your boss? Immediate superior, now.”  
  
“Ma’m,”-  
_  
“Ranger.”  
  
“_Ranger Archeron, the test is designed to map holding potential. We start at the lowest”-  
  
“You almost killed us, you _limp-dicked piece of shit._ Holding potential? _We’ve already drifted! I have a co-pilot, I don’t need be tested, and you can tell the fucking admiralty that if they want us dead, they better have the fucking grace to feed us to a goddamn Kaiju!”  
_  
“Archeron.” Cassian had never seen Hikado so visibly human- or tangible pissed off. He’d actually heard her coming. “Take him.”  
  
Nesta watched the tech she’d most likely been about to murder hauled off. Planted her bare feet. Hissed in low, pained voice. _“Amren.”  
  
“I will take care of it._ Nesta, they started before I was in the room.”  
  
The noise Nesta made sounded more animal than human.  
  
Cassian ignored the lights at the edges of his vision. That taste of blood in the back of his mouth. 

“Archeron,” He reached for her shoulder.  
  
She twisted in place when he spoke, turned and- went blank. Froze. Raised a hand like she was going to touch his face and then-  
  
Cassian came to on the ground.  
  
Except the ground had _rails-_ Nesta’s voice, hissed, cut through bleak unconsciousness. “What do you mean, you can’t find anything? There was blood coming out of his eyes.”

“Initial scans show your brain waves returning to normal. We need both of you here overnight in case you spike, not to mention the uh, _burns._ ”  
_  
“But”-_

Eyes closed, cheek smashed into what was resolving itself to be a scratchy medbay pillow, Cassian muttered, “M’ fine, Nesta.”  
  
He could hear, over the beep of machinery and whatever the doctor was doing, the furious breath out her nose. But soft, quiet, she said, “ _Shut up,_ Cassian.” _  
_  
Dutifully, Cassian passed out again. _  
_  
The next thing he recognized was his brother’s voice.  
  
“I think you’re being awfully harsh considering”- Gentle, relentless. Azriel was absolutely going to give Cassian that _I’m disappointed in you_ face when he woke.  
  
“I think you’re being remarkably calm considering he could have _died._ ” Nesta whispered, furiously.  
  
Distantly, Cassian thought, _I didn’t get to see them meet_ \- but it was quickly buried beneath what Azriel said next.  
  
“My brother didn’t dream of being a jaeger pilot, but he’s loved them since his first drop. I’ve been in enough shatterdomes to know what they call him- but Cassian has always, _always,_ wanted a co-pilot.”  
  
‘I _know._ ” She was angry, so angry, a fire that would burn out the ocean. Cassian wished he could have explained, _Az, she’d not mad, not really. She’s scared._ Wanted to hug Nesta even if she punched him for it, so she could know he was alive and whole and this wasn’t her nightmares.  
  
A hand, too small to be Azriel’s, crept into Cassian’s slack grip.  
  
“Are you familiar with how the handshake works?” Nesta finally asked.  
  
Quiet.  
  
Cassian could see the soft way Azriel would shake his head, the smile he reserved for students saying, _no tell me, use your words, its okay, correctness isn’t made with precision.  
  
“Handshake,_” Nesta said, slowly, “Implies you reach out in the drift and hold on. That you can let go at any time. It’s not held hands. It’s a bridge.” She breathed out, hard. “You can walk across. That’s what your brother did- he could tell I was pain, probably unconsciously, and tried to hold the whole drift himself.”  
  
“His first instinct was to protect you.”  
  
“His instincts are going to get him killed- _and I don’t_ \- I’m not going to let that happen.”

“You can’t drift with anyone else,” The way Azriel said it managed to make this a kindness, but Cassian didn’t have to imagine the ravaged pain on Nesta’s face, “Can you honestly say that if you walked away, Cassian could ever pilot with anyone else either?”  


***

The first thing Cassian said, when he woke for real was, “You called me _Cassian_.”  
  
“Did I?”  
  
He opened his eyes. Nesta was perched at the end of his cot- hair rebraided, face ashen, dressed in loose, soft, institutional grey clothes that didn’t hide the fact her feedback scars seemed to be _oozing_.  
  
“Awake! You’re right on time Ranger Asani.” An unspeakably cheerful man in scrubs appeared. It didn’t escape Cassian that he’d walked _around_ Nesta, rather than stand on the same side of cot as where she sat. “We’ve got you all hooked in, you’ll be under observation for the night, but everything is looking good!”  
  
Nesta wanted to _strangle_ him.  
  
The vague violence accelerated into straight murder as he turned that smile on her. “Which means it’s time for _you_ to get looked at.” There was iron in his eyes, strain that appeared around his mouth even if the cheer in his voice didn’t flag. “If you’d lay down, we’ll get you hooked up to monitoring and someone _will_ be over to clean those wounds.”  
  
He was smart enough not to linger long enough for a reply.  
  
She didn’t move.  
  
“Archeron.” It wasn’t going to work. “ _Sweetheart,_ you’re bleeding onto my blankets.”  
  
She flipped him off. Cassian was so grateful to see her furious face his ribs ached with it.  
  
“Why aren’t you?”  
  
“She wouldn’t let them touch her until you woke up.” Azriel called in greeting from the doorway. “How do you feel, Cassian?”  
  
Instead of the expected retort, Nesta hissed a low word that sounded distinctly like _traitor,_ but nodded a thank you to his brother as he handed her a steaming mug. Black tea and mint temporarily overpowered the antiseptic smell of medical, bewilderingly homey.  
  
Cassian blinked. “Fine. I feel fine- how long was I out?”  


“Eight hours,” Nesta growled.  
  
Eight hours- the coma window, the clot window, the slippery slope where unconsciousness was just waiting to become death. 1 in 3, dead by complication. Cassian waited for the yelling to start.  
  
Instead, what happened was this: Azriel kissed Cassian on the forehead, and left. Nesta, with the bullying of three nurses, was forced into the second bed, wrapped in bandages and hooked to a mirror of the machinery on Cassian’s side of the room: heart monitor, brain wave tracker.  
  
Drift tech, more than medical.

And then they were left alone.  
  
He could see the moment the painkillers took hold, ferocious discomfort dialed back into aggressively still distress.  
  
They’d both flinched when the nurse had tried to tuck her in- if it had been a fried drop in a jaeger, they’d have been in the _womb:_ drift tech made hospital suite, every comfort to try to equalize their bodies- this was barebones navy medical, and warm rough thermal fabric was a horrible match for Nesta’s exposed nerve of a body.  
  
Undrugged, less firmly anchored, Cassian shrugged out of the long sleeved shirt they’d put him in.  
  
He held it out.  
  
With a slow guardedness that was _absolutely foreign,_ she took it. Nearly hid the wince as pulled it on, overlarge sleeves hiding scraped raw skin. She tucked them into her palms.

Cassian swallowed. Choked. Swallowed again and tried to summon up a Nesta Archeron drawl. “ _So_ , you love peaches. But they never taste as good as they smell.”  
  
Relief, heat, pounded at her raised brows.  
  
“You named your childhood cat _Princess Jasmine Love_.”  
  
Cassian settled back against against the sad excuse for a pillow, propped his head on his hands. “He was very noble cat, Archeron. Don’t knock it.”  
_  
“He?”_  
  
It was easier to speak, staring at the ceiling, than to turn his head and watch her wonderful, _I will absolutely roast you until death_ voice come out of this newly revealed, softened Nesta.  
  
She was letting him see it.  
  
She was wearing his shirt.  
  
“Az found him at the park. And let me tell you, his present understanding of the natural world _did not exist at seven_ \- he decided it was a girl cat because all fluffy white cats are girls, and all black cats are boys. For some reason our dad didn’t check until we had Princess at the vet.”  
  
“And you didn’t want to change the name?”  
  
“Naw, my mom laughed every time she said it.”  
  
Rustling- Nesta settling. Cassian risked a glance and found her curled up on her side, facing him.  
  
There was blood under the nails of her right hand.

***

The last thing Cassian said before he slipped under, in the dreamlike, _scared_ tone that in Nesta’s experience meant _catastrophic nerve damage_ was, _“_ Archeron. _”_  
  
He wanted to know if _she_ was okay.  
  
Nesta wanted to catch him- Nesta did catch him, entire body screaming at her for trying, until the bulk of his larger frame carried them both to the ground. She didn’t feel the crash- Nesta was too busy talking, trying to get him to open those stupid, warm, hazel eyes.  
  
He’d taken the drift for her.  
  
From her.  
  
Nesta wasn’t sure he’d ever wake up.

***

_Neural handshake, Asani & Archeron: 2.8 seconds.  
_

_Drift time, trial two: 12 seconds._

_Safety code 0395: Solo drift initiated, Safety code 1854: Heptic overload, Safety code 0196: Feedback sensor malfunction, Safety code 0398: Temporary cardic arrest, Safety code 1720: Sim breakdown malfunction, Safety code 0399: Transference overload-_

***

They kept them in medical for twelve more hours, during which they weren’t allowed to sleep.  
  
What Cassian learned: that even painkillers seemed to only effect Nesta enough that she spoke half a step slower. That she leaned into sleeplessness voraciously. That the only thing she really missed about San Francisco was _food._

_“Oaxacan diners_ , Asani. I guarantee you didn’t have them.”  
  
“No,” Tiredness made her look like a fucking ghost, dead white where she wasn’t wounded red. A part of Cassian- growing louder by the minute- that sounded alarmingly like his mother, wanted to feed her. “No, Archeron, _come on,_ you can find good street tacos anywhere if you know where to look.”

Fighting just to fight- she was too.  
  
“Okay, _but fuck that_ \- fruit. Cannot tell me New York is doing better with produce than _California._ ”  
  
Cassian snorted. “Right, because the best green markets in the US definitely aren’t on the east coast. Nes, have some fucking respect, _heritage farming._ ”  
  
She groaned.  
  
“I bet I could find you peaches that actually taste as good as they smell,” Cassian murmured, quieter than he meant to, temporarily possessed by a world that didn’t exist: Nesta Archeron, Brooklyn, stomping around in boots that weren’t regulation.  
  
“ _Sure,_ if they taste like nectarines.”  
  
Technically, they were still playing the game of the drift. When they weren’t yelling.  
  
Sometime in hour six- after Nesta threw her pillow at him, even more infuriated when Cassian caught it, an inch from his face- she’d flung herself backwards, propped her bare feet up on the wall above where her head should have lain.  
  
Sometime in fighting about food, she’d sat back up, leaning on her elbows. The v of her body hurt to look at. The neckline of the oversized shirt, slipping off her bruised shoulder. Blue eyes burning out of her gaunt face.  
  
Cassian stopped _thinking.  
  
“_My mom would love you so much. Swear to god, my entire function as her only son who can cook is _carrying_ things- she loves me, but she also thinks I cannot even pick out fresh herbs correctly.”  
  
Nesta blinked.  
  
Nesta said with a sly smiled that hooked beneath Cassian’s ribs, “Bigger bunches aren’t better. All the leaves in the middle are _bruised._ ”

Cassian was going to marry her.  
  
“Are you- _are you fucking_ \- Archeron, you cannot even cook! You can barely make tea!”  
  
She shrugged, catlike. “Your brothers going to teach me to do tea. Saw me drinking instant coffee and _lost his mind._ ”  
  
Cassian, who’d _also_ probably more eat than drink sludge if the situation called for it, laughed. “He’ll reel in you with tea. And then, once you’ve eaten the really good cookies he’ll lie and said he made, he’ll start asking you about _Kaiju.”  
_  
Her smile froze. “He’s not an engineer.”  
  
Nesta Archeron, who’d _beheaded_ the first category three. 40 drops, 40 kills- love that was hate, spinning on a coin.  
  
He effected a casual tone. “Az? No, he’s a biologist. Molecular was the plan but,” Cassian waved his hand to indicate _apocalyptic fuckery_ , “His whole career is Kaiju. They call it”-  
  
“Breach Classification of Nonterrestrial Bodies.” And then, with the narrowing of her eyes, “ _Understanding of the natural world_.”  
  
Cassian laughed into his hands, his words in her mouth.

What he didn’t know until the twelve hours were over, stumbling beside a vibrantly, frighteningly awake Nesta: while they had been in monitored isolation, Elain Archeron arrived on base like the wrath of god.  
  
She wanted to see her sister.

***

Elain Archeron held the record for the second fastest neural handshake in history.  
  
40 drops, 40 kills. Primary jaeger weapon: flamethrower, the providence of which was a patented chemical compound she’d _invented_ with her husband. 

Left hemisphere on Serene Majesty.  
  
Medical discharge, refused.  
  
She’d been promoted instead. _Snatched_ , like Nesta, from Atlantic United to Pan Pacific, thrust up the chain as Head of Pilot Training and Drift tech- she answered to Admirals. Barely.  
  
The woman who’d been half of Nesta for the better part of a decade- her sister, her best friend, the honeyed iron beside Nesta’s ferocious protectiveness raising their younger sister. 

Missed like a heart longed for lungs, an absent piece Nesta compensated for constantly, off balance as if she’d lost a limb.  
  
Cassian wished he could say he was excited to meet her.

***

Nesta had never wanted to drift with anyone _but_ Elain.  
  
Someone she’d already been able to explain herself to without words. Nesta and Elain: dark and light, anger and laughter, two sides of the same coin, the shared remaking of what it had meant to be an Archeron.  
  
Not their beloved mother.  
  
Not their equally dead, asshole father.  
  
Nesta and Elain, who’d take care of Feyre, who’d fight the whole damned world to give her a future- who’d fight the monsters, who wanted to take that world away.  
  
8 second handshake- eighteen and nineteen years old, fresh from training. They’d receive Serene two years later- it had felt like fate, like destiny.  
  
Nesta had thought destiny died in the cold sea between Alaska and Russia. Drown in salt, lost to the ice. All she’d done since- _she didn’t know how to walk through the world alone, she didn’t know how to keep her sisters safe anymore_ \- was try and prevent some further doom.  
  
It was easy to hate Asani- handsome, friendly, painfully self-assured- on sight.  
  
Nesta had never wanted to epitomize her training. She wanted to fight, wanted to face the hurricane and win. She’d never desired to rewrite her brain, to breathe and relearn pathways, until she could flay herself open for anyone, trust be-damned.  
  
She hadn’t thought- she’d never considered, clawing at the remains of a life that was _over_ \- that none of that would be necessary.  
  
It was easy to drift with Cassian.  
  
So easy it was dangerous.  
  
The second thing Elain told her, after she’d met him, was, “ _Nesta_. Don’t feel guilty.”

***

She was there to _train_ them.  
  
In swordplay.

***

  
Cassian successfully managed to pretend he wasn’t holding on by the skin of his teeth for less than a day. Alone- he’d always hated being alone, even as a kid. Now, the quiet _echoed._

_What the hell was he even doing?  
_  
So less than twenty hours after leaving Nesta in the company of her sister- _running away_ \- Cassian stepped through the blast doors, and followed Nesta’s laugh into the rain. Tilted his head back into it- more mist than downpour, ocean instead of ozone in his lungs- and when he looked again, Nesta was beside him.  
  
Smirking.  
_  
Are you done losing your shit, Asani?  
_  
She crossed her arms. Redistributed her weight. Looked at the grey sky as he had been and finally said, “The hull is finished.”  
  
Cassian swallowed.  
  
“They want us for it tomorrow,” Nesta went on, smugness the only thing that had ever take the knife edge from her mouth. “Last chance to fight for a gun, Asani.”  
  
“A _backup_ gun,” He insisted, automatically. “Cat threes _break_ swords, Archeron. Serene’s backup was a fucking whip.”  
  
“I strangled Spinecrusher with that whip, _asshole._ ”  
  
His body resettled into his bones. Warmed in the mist.  
  
Cassian grinned. “They have a name yet?”  
  
A name for their jaeger- _their’s._

An actual nights sleep, stolen, Cassian remembered more of their last drop. Nesta Archeron yelling at the top of her lungs, _I have a co-pilot._ Nesta Archeron calling the tech who’d failed the catch the malfunction- caused the cascade-a _limp dicked piece of shit.  
_  
Nesta Archeron, in a tone that made his heart want to explode, _shut up, Cassian.  
_  
Nesta, in a voice on the opposite side of the spectrum: “ _No._ Asani, are you telling me you don’t know? We name it.”  
  
Maybe everything she said made his heart feel that way.  
  
“Did you name Serene?”  
  
She shook her head. “ _First_ round pilots. Name, color. In an ideal world, we’re not supposed to be _separated._ ”  
  
The first drop. Death by cold, death by a heat that shouldn’t exist, burning alive inside the drift.  
  
“ _We won’t be_ ,” Cassian tipped in urgent without pausing for fear, unable to not promise it- “Nesta. That jaeger’s _ours._ ”  
  
She raised a brow. Tilted her head to meet his gaze head on. Said, low, _low_ with that real, impermeable happiness that no one who didn’t know her would recognize, “Ours.”  
  
“Goddamn right, Archeron.”  
  
Cassian waited for _contact._ The volleying shot of her voice. A hand, snapped against his ribs. He knew the dance- he _liked_ the dance.  
  
Instead, Nesta grinned.  
  
“Does not mean you can tell Vanserra your _boxing jaeger joke_.”  
  
“Are you seriously pretending you’ve never punched a Kaiju? _Honeygirl, you dream about punching Kaiju.”  
_  
She punched him instead. Lingered, knuckles skating down his side. Scoffed in disgust. “If you tell him, he’ll try to make it _happen. And kicking like that does not work,_ going to fuck all the stabilizers-“  
  
The rest of sentence was lost to wave of noise as helicopters landed at the other end of the platform. Cassian didn’t need the words. Cassian’s mouth was already open to snark back when Nesta’s name echoed through the chaos.  
  
There was a teenager _running_ toward them.  
  
“Nesta,” A girl who could only be Feyre Archeron yelled again. She looked exactly like a younger Nesta- she looked like a person Nesta had never been.  
Her automatic smile had tired edges.

“ _Fey,_ ” Nesta braced herself, perfectly in time to catch the arms outstretched _dive_ toward her, “Tell me you did not sneak onto a transport.”  


“No- no, no, no, of course not!” She popped up her face from Nesta’s shoulder, freckles stark across the bridge of her nose, “Hello, handsome stranger.”

Nesta tugged on the end of her ponytail. Playful. A bare minimum of force to what was undoubtedly a redirect. Cassian bit his smile.“Feyre. Sweetheart, what are you doing here?”  
  
“I’m on leave,” The younger Archeron sang, indignant. “All the baby pilots are being sent across the world to safety, I wanted to come see you and Elain first- I wanted you to meet my boyfriend!”  
  
She flung an arm behind her, to a fast approaching tall figure in a Pan Pacific flight suit, black curls falling in his face.  
  
Nesta’s eyes narrowed dangerously the exact same second Cassian said, panicked, _“Rhys?”_

Nesta’s face snapped to Cassians. They managed to say in the same moment, in utterly different tones, “ _No._ ”  
  
Rhysand shoved his hands in his pockets, rocking forward to kiss the side of Feyre’s head. “Hello to you too, Cas.”  
  
Cassian looked to the sky like it had an answer. The black clouded horizon told him, _no such fucking luck._ He needn’t have bothered- if Nesta ripped out his brother’s spine, Cassian could personally see where it was justified.  
  
“How old are you?” Nesta demanded.  
_  
“Nes”-  
_  
“Nineteen,” Answered Rhysand, pride unwavering but for the jump of his Adams apple. 

“Great,” Nesta snapped, and grabbed her taller, utterly mortified sister’s wrist to pull, “You can see her in two years. Say goodbye to Cassian, Feyre.”  
_  
“Nesta-_ wait, that’s Asani? Elain!”  
  
Elain, her husband, and Azriel had arrived, moving together through the open shatterdome doors. Cassian could hear from where he stood the low, extremely unyielding pitch of Elain’s sweet voice saying, “Feyre, honey, you know”-  
  
Cassian crossed his arms.  
  
Cassian prayed to whatever holy thing existed, and tried to talk to his brother. _“Rhys.”  
_  
“Don’t _Rhys_ me,” He grumbled, red-mottled cheeks glowing hot. “She’s almost seventeen. We met in training and”-  
  
“Rhys, that doesn’t make it better.”  
  
“Oh, fuck off Cassian, like you give a single shit who I’m dating.”  
  
“Of course I give a shit, _what are you even?”  
_  
Azriel rocked to a stop, looked between his brothers, and with a sigh, slowly took off his glasses to tuck them into a cardigan pocket. “What’d I miss?”  
  
“Rhysand is defiling Nesta’s _underaged_ sister.”  
_  
“Cassian.”  
_  
Muttering something that sounded distinctly like, _may god help us,_ Azriel hugged his youngest brother. Rhys went willingly, red and scowling.  
  
Cassian couldn’t actually help himself in the face of that utterly teenaged scowl. “Habibi, why don’t I get a hug? From my one and only baby brother?”  
  
Azriel sighed.  
  
“Az gets a hug because he didn’t just completely humiliate me.”  
  
Gently, like none of this was happening, Azriel said, “You didn’t tell us you’d joined Pan Pacific. We thought you were still in South America.”  
  
“ _And not trying to get it on with a sixteen year old.”  
_  
When Az didn’t come to his rescue, or intercede with Cassian’s glare, Rhys sighed, angry shoulders dropping to normal level. “I’m not getting it on with anyone- I’m not- she’s almost seventeen. When I was seventeen, they had me flying active Rift scouting missions.”  
  
Less gentle, but still soft, Azriel said. “We both asked you not to enlist, you had a scholarship to”-  
  
“That fucking white boy British boarding school?” Rhys snickered.  
  
“I’m saying, you’ve had a very unusual youth, and maybe grew up too quickly. But that doesn’t mean you haven’t grown up. That Feyre is still _growing_ up.”  
  
“If we were in school, this would be normal! We’re not even”-  
  
Succinctly,Cassian interrupted. “If you _touch_ Nesta’s baby sister, it will be a race between both of us to see who castrates you and trust me Rhys, we will both win.”  
  
Rhys made a noise like a kettle. “You’re on her side, what? Because you’re _drift compatible._ Of fucking course.” _  
_  
Cassian looked at Az, Az shrugged back as if to say, _you knew he’d think it.  
  
“Rhys._ Rhysand, I am always on your side. Always. But you cannot seriously think dating a sixteen year old is okay.”  
  
Rhysand’s only answer was white knuckles, a sad scrunch to his hazel eyes that made Cassian want to kick something. His fucking brother- even when Cassian got it right with him, he couldn’t get it right.  
  
“Why don’t we go inside,” Azriel offered.  
  
Rhys muttered something indistinct.  
  
“ _Rhys_?”  
  
Rhysand blew his hair out of his face. “I can’t,” He ground out, looking at neither of them, “I transferred back to Air Support so I could do school at the same time, I have to meet my advisor. I’m his research assistant.”  
  
Pride, a whole warm tide, filled Cassian’s lungs. “Rhysand, that’s”-  
  
“I have to go,” Rhys said, “Az, do you know where I can find Dr. Vanserra?”  
  
“Yeah, Rhys,” Said Az, dark eyes liquid. “I share a lab with him, actually. I’ll show you the way, we can meet up for dinner after.”  
  
Rhysand nodded, ducked his head. Soft, slow, Cassian bumped his knuckles to his brother’s shoulder in goodbye.  
  
Rhysand’s chin only dipped lower as they left.  
  
That Nesta found Cassian before his brothers showed back up was not a positive sign. That she’d sought him out- that she found him alone, pummeling a punching bag and said only, _catch,_ before throwing a thermos at him- said the very opposite.  
  
She flowed down to the floor, and Cassian followed, panting.  
  
“Feyre told me I ruined her life.”  
  
Untwisting the lid revealed steam, coffee black as tar. “I told Rhys we’d chop off his favorite parts if he didn’t cut that shit out.”  
  
“Somehow, I can’t imagine Az hurting anyone.”  
  
Cassian gestured with the thermos, too tired not to say it. “ _Us,_ we.”  
  
Nesta didn’t smile, but the uptick of her mouth was there. “I got the whole story They met five months ago, mandatory intermediate survival training.”  
  
Cassian groaned, sprawled back on floor. “Oh shit, they desert islanded them?”  
  
“ _Apparently_ ,” Nesta stole an unrepentant sip of the coffee and rolled her eyes. “He’s been sending her letters ever since? This is the first time they’ve been in the same place since then. Feyre think they’re in _love._ I’m going to have to watch her like a fucking hawk.”  
  
“Sounds about right.” Cassian began trying to finger comb his hair, sweat-tangled curls catching. “Rhys is a little asshole, don’t get me wrong, but he’s also very, very loyal. Romantic. He takes after our mom.”  
  
Quietly, Nesta asked, “He’s enlisted under her name, isn’t he?”  
  
Cassian thought probably, he didn’t even need to reply. But he wanted to, he always wanted to, even if Nesta already knew. “We don’t get along. He was a really angry kid, you know? Doesn’t remember our dad, always kind of loved and hated that Az and I stepped in.”  
  
He took the thermos she’d held out, automatic as breathing. Swallowed. “He uh, doesn’t talk to us, not really. Not since he left home. Mom gets letters but… He didn’t want the name, to always be in the shadow.”  
  
And Nesta, _perfect fucking Nesta_ said, “That’s fucked.”  
  
And Cassian laughed.  
  
“No,” She jabbed his bare stomach, “No, I’m serious. You’re a jaeger pilot, that’s something to be proud of. Azriel is one of the only Kaiju experts in the _world-_ you love that kid, and he’s lucky to have you.”  
  
He wanted to hug her. He flopped closer instead, disgusting sweaty hair propped against her thigh. She shoved him off, but her hand lingered on his shoulder. Hot. Steady. “He’s also Lucien’s new research assistant.”  
  
Nesta’s laugh was just on the side of evil. 

“In Vanserra’s head, Feyre is 100% still the eleven year old who threw flowers at his wedding. How dedicated are you to your brother having hands?”  
  
“Flexible.”  
  
The spark of her smile caught. And then she shrugged right out of her jacket, tank top dipping low over scars. “Spar before awkward family dinner hell starts?”  
  
Cassian had never been happier to be thrown to the floor. 

**Author's Note:**

> ...and then Feyre dumped Rhys. 
> 
> Up next: A color! a name! an actual jaeger fight. Cassian's self esteem vs Cassian's actually extremely good intuition of what Nesta Archeron wants, feat. Cassian being a surrogate Big Brother.


End file.
